NON-REFLEXIVE USE OF THE THIRD PERSON POSSESSIVE SUFFIX

Guardians of the Finnish language have from time to time
advised against the type of use of the 3rd person possessive suffix
whereby the suffix refers to a parallel sentence constituent of the same
type, e.g. Äsken oli pääministerin ja avovaimonsa puheenvuoro (avovaimo+3rd
pers. poss. suff.; 'A moment ago it was the prime minister's and [his]
common-law wife's turn to speak'); Elina ja miehensä tulivat (mies+3rd
pers. poss. suff.; 'Elina and [her] husband arrived'). In standard
Finnish, this possessive construction would include hänen or
heidän, the genitive form of the 3rd person singular and plural
personal pronouns (– – pääministerin ja hänen avovaimonsa puheenvuoro;
Elina ja hänen miehensä – –). Pronounless use, i.e. non-reflexive use,
of the 3rd person possessive suffix to refer to other than the subject of
the sentence is especially common in newspaper and magazine picture
captions and headlines, where it has presumably become established on
account of its brevity. In addition to these cases of parallel sentence
constituents, non-reflexive use of the 3rd person possessive suffix that
deviates from standard Finnish is also found in cases where the suffix
refers to a constituent in a previous clause or sentence, even several
clauses previously, e.g. Vuosia myöhemmin sama laivapoika on kapteenina
ja mukana on poikansa ('hänen poikansa'; 'Years later the same cabin
boy is now captain and he has [his] son with him').

In the vernacular, the non-reflexive 3rd person possessive
suffix is widely recognised in Finnish dialectal constructions in which it
is included in a word that expresses membership of the immediate family or
other family relationships (e.g. isä, äiti, poika, tyttö, veli, sisko,
mies, vaimo, täti, eno) and refers to the previous clause or even
further back (Karkku parish: katteli siälä ku se veljensät talo palo;
'was there watching as [his] brother's house burned'). Such examples are
particularly abundant in the Savo and Häme dialects, but the construction
is also found in the Ostrobothnian, Northern and Southeastern dialects. By
contrast, with other types of words, the 3rd person possessive suffix is
used non-reflexively only in the central Häme dialects (e.g. Viljakkala
parish: hän aatteli että lähteekö sormensap poikki; 'he thought
[his] finger would break'). In the Häme dialects this phenomenon has also
expanded syntactically. Whereas elsewhere the suffix is normally with the
subject, in the Häme dialects, in particular, it can appear with other
sentence constituents: adverbials, complements and objects, or their
modifiers. Use of the suffix with parallel sentence constituents as in the
Elina ja miehensä type of clause is not, however, typical of the
vernacular. This construction is, in fact, an innovation based on the
dialectal non-reflexive manner of reference connected with family-related
terms.

In nineteenth-century written Finnish the use of
possessive suffixes had not yet become established. The non-reflexive use
of the 3rd person possessive suffix appears to have been favoured most of
all by writers in the Häme and other western dialects. Amongst those
involved in developing the written language, it was especially the Savo-born
August Ahlqvist who sought to discourage this non-reflexive use. There
were still examples of the non-reflexive use of the suffix in E. N.
Setälä's Finnish grammar Lauseoppi (e.g. in the 1919
edition), but these were dropped from the edition revised by Sadeniemi.
According to Eeva Lindén (1959: 306-307), the reason for removal of the
examples was probably the influence of Swedish. However, it seems that
another influential factor behind this was that the non-reflexive use of
the suffix has been most widespread lexically and syntactically in only a
comparatively small area covering the Häme dialects.

Directions from guardians of the language have had little
impact on deterring the non-reflexive use of the suffix with parallel
sentence constituents as in the Elina ja miehensä type of clause,
even though the construction can sometimes create ambiguity of meaning.
The popularity of this type of construction in newspapers and magazines
may also be due to the fact that it is not directly based on any regional
dialect.